Inside ESPN's new 'Around The Horn' studio with Tony Reali, the man who keeps it all together

NEW YORK — On a Tuesday in early December, Tony Reali is in the host’s equivalent of Steph Curry pre-game mode.

He slowly paces around ESPN’s new state-of-the-art studio in the South Street Seaport, waxing poetic on Kobe Bryant’s shot at bandwagon Lakers fans that went viral earlier that morning. Although the cameras and mics are on — there’s a chance his exchange will be used as a “Before the Horn” segments on YouTube or Twitter — Reali is relaxed and speaking extemporaneously.

“I have no problem with someone saying, ‘I watch this team play, I like how this team plays, I’m going to be a fan of this team,'” he says. “Why do I have to actively choose a team that’s boring?”

His co-stars and the show’s competitors — that day, it’s Denver-based columnist Woody Paige, Dallas Morning News scribe Tim Cowlishaw, The Washington Post’s Kevin Blackistone, and ex-Boston Globe columnist Jackie MacMullan — aren’t there, of course. But with the studio’s new ability to use augmented reality, their faces will look to viewers like they exist on the same floor Reali paces. It’s astonishing technology, really, a complete game-changer in so many ways. But in this moment the bells and whistles don’t matter; it’s just old friends talking sports. The panelists mostly agree with Reali’s take.

(Photo by Lorenzo Bevilaqua / ESPN Images)

It is during this conversation that the Massachusetts-raised MacMullan reveals that she was a Dallas Cowboys fan growing up because her father looked like legendary coach Tom Landry.

Reali and the rest of the panel are genuinely surprised, which itself is surprising because MacMullan has appeared on over 750 episodes of the debate show. They know her well.

Some 20 minutes later, Reali is in the midst of finishing the first scored segment of the show, and as he steps away from his dais to send the show to a break, he mentions the MacMullan’s-dad-as-Landry factoid and weaves in the fact that Cowlishaw’s children think he looks like actor Josh Brolin. Reali starts off the next segment asking Cowlishaw to do an imitation of Brolin for an extra point.

“What am I supposed to do, chase Javier Bardem all over the border?” Cowlishaw replies to laughs.

So much about Around The Horn has changed, and in real life the spacious studio resembles a gladiator arena taken out of a sci-fi movie. The show is nearly 17 years old but looks brand new — as fresh as anything on television today.

Yet the feel of the show remains. If anything, it is aging with a sort of patina that makes the concept — which felt gimmicky even at inception — continue to thrive.

Reali has, somewhat improbably, become the heart of what began as a way to showcase the outsized personalities of far-flung columnists. His deft handling — of people and topics — makes it work. He had the wherewithal to file away that MacMullan nugget and remember to use it mid-show, all while paying close attention to the seconds ticking away on a digital clock under one of the cameras, the voices of producers and a researcher in his ear, and the four panelists in front of him that he needs to score, fact-check and mute if necessary. He’s also prepared for debates to go in any number of directions.

That kind of comfort level takes time to cultivate. Years, in fact. Years that, for Reali, brought the sort of difficulties no one could prepare for.

So while the changes to Around The Horn feel like a thrilling chance for ESPN to reinvigorate “the show of competitive banter,” the program’s future rests more than ever on Reali. He may now have a roving, button-covered lectern to stand at and the ability to traverse the gleaming set but his growth as a person and host is the force that keeps the show moving.

* * *

Reali had arrived at the South Street Seaport around noon that day, about two hours before Around The Horn is filmed. Confronted with a For The Win reporter there to interrupt his routine with questions about changes to the show and to his life, he does not settle into his office to chat. Instead, Reali darts off through the new space, making introductions to the writers, producers, camera operators and stars of the shows that film there.

Upon reaching another studio, home to Get Up! and High Noon, he pauses to look back at a career in television that’s spanned almost two decades and the shows that have made him a star.

“The thesis of Around The Horn is all opinions — I’m not going to say matter — deserve to be proved by the person giving them,” Reali says. “The purpose of the show is to prove why your argument is best.”

Reali — who introduced himself in person by his full name, Anthony Joseph Paul Reali — was just a baby-faced 23-year-old a year removed from getting his diploma at Fordham when he became “Stat Boy,” the Pardon The Interruption sidekick to Washington Post columnists Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. His job was to bring a dose of youthful energy to segments while informing the pair at the end of each episode what facts they missed or got wrong during their battle. Working on the rapid-fire, all-encompassing show forced Reali to develop range.

“He’s a generalist,” Wilbon says of Reali. “Television has made a lot of people specialized. He understands every sport he follows.”

Charles Curtis

Nearly three years later, Around The Horn’s original host, Max Kellerman bolted for FOX Sports, leaving the ATH chair open in the same studios used by PTI. It was a shock for Reali when he became the full-time host in 2004.

“This is not the type of show I can host,” he remembers thinking. “I’m not (playing) a sidekick or a smart-aleck, as I’m comfortable being. I’ve always thought about it this way: It’s the shot in The Office when Jim and Pam look at the camera while Michael Scott’s doing something stupid. That side-eye, before we called it side-eye. That’s what I viewed my role as Stat Boy.”

This isn’t, according to those who know him best, an act. This — an aw shucks demeanor, the awe at where he’s gotten — really is Tony Reali.

“I don’t ever see Tony Reali with an act,” says Wilbon. “I have described him as a prince among men. He’s the nicest person in the world. I’ve never seen airs or phony.”

He’s long been that way, says Bob Ahrens, the recently-retired executive sports producer at Fordham University’s WFUV and a mentor to Reali. “The best thing and nicest thing I can tell you about Tony is he is the same person he was when I had him as a student,” he says.

Which partly explains why Reali felt uncomfortable giving his opinion to — or forcefully hitting the mute button on — revered names like MacMullen, former Boston Globe writer Bob Ryan or Los Angeles Times’ award-winner Bill Plaschke. That, to him, didn’t feel like the right way to do the job.

“The host needs to not be the final opinion,” he says in the middle of his personal tour. “It needs to be more about amplifying their voices and having that moment where you call them with that side-eye.”

He also wanted to infuse the show with himself. The Staten Island-born, New Jersey-raised Reali wanted the debates to feel like the ones he had with his family at Sunday dinners and add in elements from pop culture that he loves, from Seinfeld to Goodfellas (“The mute buttons come with smiles,” he says with a laugh).

But with the lightning-fast pace of news and the increased variety of diverse voices emerging around the nation thanks to blogs, online publications and social media, Around The Horn had to become more to its viewers than “Sports Shouting,” a cutaway gag from a 30 Rock episode cited by Reali that’s clearly a sendup of ATH. Over the years, the panel has become more diverse in race, gender and sexual orientation. The show that was nervous to discuss serious topics — it would be absurd to award points over the complex conversation needed to talk about Urban Meyer’s retirement announcement, which happened the morning of For The Win‘s visit — began approaching them head on at the beginning of episodes as un-scored segments.

It wasn’t just Around The Horn‘s staff and panelists who had to grow in order to tackle those moments. Reali says he had a lot of growing up to do, too.

* * *

There’s a segment that both Reali and his producer, Aaron Solomon, cited independently of each other as the moment Around The Horn knew it had to be able to handle those off-the-field topics, even at the cost of ignoring what the sports world at large was talking about.

In December of 2005, news broke that Tony Dungy’s son James committed suicide. That day, Reali and the panel got through a discussion, and the host exhaled.

“I didn’t want to avoid it,” Reali remembers. “But part of me was like, ‘Run, run, run.’ We did it and it was difficult. I had to grow as a host before I could start doing that.”

Solomon thought it wasn’t just Reali who had some discomfort with handling discussions about topics like Dungy’s son’s suicide. It was the show as a whole. He also remembered it as a seminal moment.

“I was emotionally gripped by what the panelists had to say that day,” Solomon says. “That was a first time for me when I was like, ‘Wow, we can do that.’ And it’s not awkward … even though we have this kooky scoring system. We can bypass the scoring to get to this.”

ESPN has often been criticizing for cultivating all the shouting that passes for sports debate, but Reali says that he has tried to change his own persona over time to move away from showmanship and toward substance.

“When you’re in your 20s, you’re trying to make other people happy,” he says. “In your 30s, you’re trying to make the people who are important to you, like you or see you in the best light. Your 40s, you’re trying to see your most authentic way about yourself.”

Reali — who turned 40 in 2018 — remembers his early days when he wore a suit because he wanted to look older. But it made him a little uncomfortable. Then there was “the lean” he did on the air while sitting at the original ATH desk. He chuckles about that now.

Those things seem, in retrospect, like small details and are, in fact, the sort of thing we all do while growing up and trying to find a place. But Reali understands now how they fit into an area of his life that he for too long neglected: managing his mental health.

Charles Curtis

“I am a relentlessly energetic and positive person. Maybe I’m a pleaser, I definitely was a goody-two-shoes, recognizing what that was, and recognizing that if you’re going to mortgage everything you’re feeling — I have to demonstrate that I’m happy and energetic — that’s not being true,” he says, now standing at his brand-new podium as the panelists are getting their hair and makeup prepared. “And that has the ability to have some negative effects. You’re bottling stuff up, it has a way of coming out.”

He’s publicly touched on some of what he’s suffered including in an extensive 2017 Q&A with Deadspin about postpartum anxiety in fathers as well as on a Sports Illustrated podcast:

“I was glad he didn’t feel the need to hide that, and that there were enough people at the network who felt the same way so he didn’t do that,” Wilbon says. “TV now is so phony and fraudulent, he’s one of the people who brings a breath of fresh air. I love him for it.”

What Reali has gone through, he and others say, has helped him mature both away from the show and on it.

“You’ve seen how emotional he gets and involved with the humanity of sports. We never used to see that,” Solomon, the producer, says. “Since having his children and going through what he went through in the summer, it has brought out the true emotion of Tony and what a huge heart he has. As we all get older, that’s what happens.”

“It took a lot of courage to go on the air and do that. It’s a very personal thing.” Ahrens says.

Reali is fond of talking about how Around The Horn exists to amplify the voices of the writers, but realizing that his own voice needed to be heard was his most crucial evolution.

* * *

Reali had jumped on a conference call at 10:30 that morning, and he and the Around The Horn staff immediately began working on the stories that will be debated later. Reali writes his own scripts and updates them throughout the day, right up until showtime (there’s a keyboard stored in his scoring lectern).

The taping — which is scheduled for three hours before the show’s 5 p.m. Eastern airtime — starts after the entire crew watches Meyer’s press conference live, waiting until the last minute to see if there’s anything relevant that they would need to address. Reali nails the opening in one take.

Charles Curtis

Solomon describes the change he’s seen in Reali since the studio redesign as “a complete Tony Hawk 900.” He’s free to walk around the studio instead of sitting behind a desk as he did for the last 16 years — the last two in a room Reali described as “the size of a closet” tucked away in an old Time Square studio (he’d moved back to the city for a short-lived second gig with Good Morning America). Viewers probably had no idea he was so cramped, but his producer could tell (and the audience has reacted positively to recent changes, with ratings among adults aged 25-54 up six percent according to Nielsen.)

“He emotes a lot,” Solomon says. “He uses his hands and moves. We wanted to get that out of Tony because that’s when he’s at his best. Now he’s able to pull guys forward, it makes it feel he’s closer to the panelists and it helps with the rapport he has. It brings in a little bit more of his personality where he can be more loosey goosey.”

There’s a balancing act, though, with Reali trying to make the show feel natural while also constricting it to the time allotted. It’s more trial and error than people probably realize. An introduction to Tuesday’s “buy or sell” segment needs three takes before everyone can move on. Debates over Aaron Rodgers, the Heisman Trophy and Kliff Kingsbury (he was officially hired by USC that day to be the Trojans’ offensive coordinator and, no, no one on the panel predicted he’d bolt for the NFL just over a month later to coach the Arizona Cardinals) force the second segment to run long and require a second take. The producers, of course, have a general sense of how long these segments need to be but they don’t want to stifle debate by adhering strictly to a clock. There’s time for another take, and those, as rewrites generally do, often come in tighter and better. But in the case of ATH, fresh takes may also lead to a different pair of competitors making the show’s finale — the head-to-head “Showdown.”

It doesn’t happen on this day but has plenty of times in the past. Just the week before, the whole production had to re-do “Buy or Sell” because Paige won the episode and devoted his 30 seconds of “Face Time” to a tribute to SpongeBob Squarepants creator Stephen Hillenburg and said he died of Legionnaires Disease. Hillenburg actually passed away due to ALS. The segment was scrapped and Reali’s scoring on the show that ended up airing happened to give another competitor — Plaschke — the win.

At least when it comes to viewers, the wins and losses aren’t ultimately important. To borrow a much-used cliche from sports, it’s about the process, specifically of watching four of the smartest minds and fastest mouths in journalism find ways to out-argue each other and entertain Reali in the process for that vital extra point.

Every show ends with Reali crumpling up a piece of paper — it used to be his notes for the day — and tossing it at the camera, perhaps a symbolic reminder that it’s time to put everything that was important that day behind them and to start fresh again. On this day, he nails the lens dead center.

* * *

The curtains are up and Reali is staring out into the East River, just a ferry ride’s distance from his birthplace of Staten Island. The show has finished taping just after 3 p.m. and the crew around him is assembling the First Take set for the next morning.

He mentions there are almost always bananas on set, a reminder that his grandfathers unloaded the fruit at the very same Pier 17 that now houses the studio. It’s one way Reali — who Wilbon deemed an “old soul” — keeps a connection with the past.

My grandfathers were best friends growing up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. To make money they unloaded bananas off boats at Pier 17.

As for the distant future? Reali is working on a concept combining the travels of the late Anthony Bourdain and makeover shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy into a show focused on “the moments in sports that can get people through tough times.” He mentions an example: A group of ultra marathoners he’s heard about who battle addiction by running long distances.

“I so enjoyed Bourdain’s writing and how human he was,” he says, “how he was using human experience of addiction and struggles but always exploring himself.”

There’s also more Around The Horn 2.0, of course. When the production started up again after the move to Pier 17, he delivered an inspiring speech talking about how proud he was of the show.

“The Red Sox just had their fourth champagne celebration!” he says. “In sports you get to celebrate. Normal people don’t celebrate anything in their job until they retire. In relaunching the show, I thought, here’s the chance to do that.

“I won’t bring out champagne and soak the set here,” he adds. “But here’s where you should be acknowledging where you came from, where you’re going and why we’re doing that.”

Inside ESPN's new 'Around The Horn' studio with Tony Reali, the man who keeps it all together

Reali takes us on a tour of the new studio and talks about how he and the show have evolved over the past 17 years.

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